Dr. Siobhan Meï, Lecturer, University of Massachusetts Amherst & Dr. Jonathan Square, Assistant Professor, The New School
“Rendering Revolution: Sartorial Approaches to Haitian History” is a queer, bilingual, feminist experiment in digital interdisciplinary scholarship that uses the lens of fashion and material culture to trace the aesthetic, social, and political reverberations of the Haitian Revolution as a world-historical moment.
Launched in 2020, Rendering Revolution focuses on stories of self-fashioning that rarely receive attention in colonial archives and explores the many ways in which modern identities (and concepts such as human rights) were formed in relation to the legacy of slavery in the Americas. The materials produced, curated, and translated for this project focus on the activities of occluded figures in history, including women and members of the LGBTQI+ community. Drawing on black feminist thought and transnational queer methodologies, Rendering Revolution generates a transhistorical, undisciplined digital archive that illustrates the importance of material culture in constructing diverse (and often competing) visions of freedom in the Atlantic world.
In this webinar, project founders Dr. Siobhan Meï and Dr. Jonathan Square will offer a brief overview of the project and will then focus on our approaches for publishing public-facing short-form content on proprietary social media platforms. While platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have allowed us to engage with a wide and diverse audience, there are also many concerns that arise when using a privately owned tool to curate a digital archive that explicitly addresses colonialism and its afterlives.
United Fronteras: A Transborder Digital and Public Repository
Dr. Sylvia Fernández, Assistant Professor of Public and Digital Humanities, University of Texas at San Antonio & Dr. Laura Gonzales, Assistant Professor of Digital Writing and Cultural Rhetorics, University of Florida
In 2019, the project United Fronteras began with the intention of countering the official or hegemonic representation of the Mexico-United States border in the digital cultural record and to inspire the questioning and critical development of materials or projects that utilize digital technologies to represent the border from various perspectives. In this webinar I will touch on the process of how UF creates a digital registry through a transborder model of work between academics from various humanities disciplines and members of the community outside of academia to make use of de-postcolonial digital humanities and minimal computing practices and methodologies to generate a third digital space that demonstrates the multiplicity of (hi)stories from the border and to document the public memory of the materials and projects in this region. The use of minimal computing in this project is a fundamental part of this independent and autonomous projects dedicated to resist the structures of power and physical and digital vigilance in border regions because of its ability to provide autonomy, independence, accessibility, functionality, security, neutrality and material stability across borders.
Developing a Multilingual Repository of Open/(ish) Access Materials: A Case Study of the Haitian Studies Association’s Digital Initiatives
Dr. Natália Marques da Silva, Digital fellow, Haitian Studies Association and Director of the Hand Art Center, Stetson University; Dr. Darlène Elizabeth Dubuisson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh; Dr. Laura Wagner, Independent scholar/Haitian Creole Team Lead, Respond Crisis Translation; & Dr. Petrouchka Moise, Assistant Professor / Cultural & Community-Based Digital Curator, Grinnell College Burling Library.
As part of its Decolonize Haitian Studies efforts, the Haitian Studies Association (HSA) is improving public access to Haiti-related materials. Economic and linguistic barriers in academic publishing, along with inequities of representation and authorship have had adverse effects on Haiti-based scholars and students as well as non-affiliated scholars in other locations. Despite leading knowledge production related to Haiti, such individuals have less access to resources and materials than peers associated with large North American or European universities (where facilitating high cost memberships to research databases is common). This duality is deeply concerning and requires ongoing attention, including by organizations like the HSA.
In this presentation, we outline an HSA initiative to aggregate and index Haiti-related publications, resources, and syllabi on a self-hosted repository. The goal of this repository is to support students, emerging scholars and the public with multilingual resources, like syllabi and Open/Open(ish) Access publications. We believe that the creation and dissemination of such repositories is crucial to decolonizing scholarship, particularly in relation to Digital Humanities. The presentation will address successes and challenges we’ve encountered during this project and initiate a group discussion on creatively addressing unethical barriers to knowledge.
Ian Seavey, PhD Candidate in the Department of History, Texas A&M University
Hurricanes are an important category of analysis in the study of the Greater Caribbean and specifically Puerto Rico. Most recently, in 2022, Hurricane Fiona and Hurricane Maria in 2017 reminded Puerto Ricans and U.S. government officials that storm preparedness and disaster relief represent a critical part of the colonial relationship. Since the United States acquired Puerto Rico from the Spanish in the War of 1898, 47 hurricanes have battered the island. This amounts to about one every two years, the most out of all the islands in the Greater Caribbean. However, after World War II, the number of hurricanes which hit Puerto Rico began increasing and from 1980 to the present, that number expanded out to at least one every year. The sheer volume and frequency of hurricanes has long warranted a study which visually represents these metrics. This digital environmental history project showcases how prominently hurricanes impacted Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States. Using the program ArcGIS, this study maps each hurricane that hit Puerto Rico during the American period. Each pinpoint on the map, when clicked on, includes a brief description of the effects of storm, available pictures, and how each storm fits into the broader discussions of Puerto Rican history and U.S. imperial policy. Chronicling each storm in this way demonstrates in tangible ways that hurricanes as a category of analysis must be consulted when attempting to understand the political, economic, and social environments of Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States. This project also attracts a wide-ranging audience both inside and outside of academia in an approachable but rigorously researched manner.
2nd Annual Conference of the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium (FLDH)
April 2, 2022, Flagler College, St. Augustine, FL
The Florida Digital Humanities Consortium (FLDH) will host its 2nd annual conference at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL on April 2, 2022. FLDH seeks proposals for papers, posters, lightning rounds, roundtables, and panel presentations on any topic related to digital humanities for our annual, one-day conference. We welcome proposals not only from those in higher education, including students, faculty and staff, but also from cultural institutions and other organizations doing work in the digital humanities. We look forward to a gathering of members and guests to hear about current research, to discuss topics of mutual interest, and to set goals for future collaboration.
FLDH is a Florida-based collective of institutions that seeks to promote an understanding of the humanities in light of digital technologies and research. FLDH, Founded in 2014, provides a platform for studying and discussing digital tools, methods, and pedagogies and educates teachers, faculty, and the public about the multiple, interdisciplinary ways humanities research and computing impact our world.
All proposals should include name, affiliation, contact email, and needed IT equipment. Ways you can participate in the 2022 FLDH Annual Conference include:
Individual, 15 minute talks (200-250 words abstracts)
Panel proposals, 60 minutes (750-1000 words abstract)
Posters, lightning rounds, and roundtables proposals (brief description of 150 words)
The deadline for submissions is extended to November 8, 2021.
With the cancellation of our 2020 conference, we lost the opportunity to meet and connect in person, but FLDH is finding new ways to share our stories across the state. Join us for our Digital Humanities in the Sunshine State (and beyond!) 2020-2021 Webinar Series. Registration for the Spring webinars is now open on the FLDH website. Can’t attend? The webinars will be recorded and available on the FLDH YouTube channel.
Digital Humanities in the Sunshine State (and beyond) 2020-2021 Webinar Series.
3D Digital Literacy: Digital Cultural Heritage as Pedagogy
Friday, January 29, 2 p.m.
Matthew Hunter, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Florida State University
The broadly-defined field of “digital cultural heritage” has utilized emerging technologies such as virtual reality and 3D printing to increase access to aspects of our shared human past. Pedagogically, these technologies are often used to present virtual “tourism” where participants can “visit” reconstructed spaces or interact with 3D printed replicas of otherwise inaccessible artefacts. However, these experiences sometimes concede veracity for the sake of usability, and users are often not equipped to critically engage with the choices developers made in creating these experiences. As with many digital projects, the creation of these virtual experiences are exercises in curatorial decision, and the 3D rendering of these spaces often introduces at least some error from either automated computer generation or human artistic choice in hand-correcting of models.
Digital Humanities’ pedagogical efforts in the realm of data literacy, information literacy, and visual literacy represent one approach to attempting to correct the uncritical reception of these materials. To that end, he has begun to focus on developing methods for engaging students in the critical examination of immersive and 3D-generated cultural heritage materials.
In this session Matthew will outline his experiences teaching student interns of vastly different levels of technological and humanities experience to engage with cultural heritage objects in digitally-constructed formats through creation and critique in three particular areas: virtual reality, 3D printing, and virtual soundscapes.
coloniaLab: Digital Editing with Students at UNF
Friday, February 5, 2 p.m.
Clayton McCarl, Associate Professor of Spanish and Digital Humanities, University of North Florida; Carol Lynne Hemmingway, History/Spanish major, University of North Florida; Emilia Thom, Exercise Science/Spanish major, University of North Florida; Georgina Wilson, Spanish major, University of North Florida; & Alexandra Zapata, Criminal Justice/Spanish major, University of North Florida.
coloniaLab is a workshop for the collaborative digital editing of materials related to early Latin America, directed by Dr. Clayton McCarl at the University of North Florida. This webinar will feature Dr. McCarl and four of coloniaLab’s student collaborators, who will discuss projects related to colonial-era Florida and nineteenth-century Colombia. Emilia Thom will share her edition of a series of dispatches from St. Augustine to Madrid regarding relations between the Spanish colonists and Indigenous groups. Georgina Wilson will present her work with a map and several archival documents related Fort St. Nicholas, a Spanish fortification that was located on the St. John’s river in present-day Jacksonville. Alexandra Zapata will explain her work on a slave census conducted in the Antioquia region of Colombia in the 1840s. Carol Lynne Hemmingway will discuss her edition of a manuscript by Colombian author Soledad Acosta de Samper. The students will reflect on what they have learned through these projects, and how their involvement may shape their future academic and professional plans.
Modelling Strong Governance and Un-Colonized Mutual Aid to Uplift Diversity and Inclusivity: Fostering our Inescapable Network of Mutuality with the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
Friday, February 12, 2 p.m.
Laurie N. Taylor, PhD., Senior Director for Library Technology & Digital Strategies, University of Florida, & Brian W. Keith, MBA, Associate Dean for Administration and Faculty Affairs at the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
Power inequities have allowed even well-intended museums and libraries to disrupt people’s knowledge of and access to cultural heritage. Libraries and museums were allies in or at least instruments of the political and legal dominance of one culture over others. Alternative or mitigative models to this colonization have emerged in response: decolonizing, postcolonial, postcustodial, and slow archives. This presentation discusses a new alternative model based on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), which incorporates tenants of shared governance, mutual aid, generous thinking, community building, polycentrism, collaborative pluralism, and mutual dependency. dLOC is an open access digital library of Caribbean and circum-Caribbean resources, providing access and preservation for materials from archives, libraries, museums, and private collections. Partner institutions are dLOC’s heart, connecting other core communities of scholars, teachers, students and other groups. dLOC exemplifies a transnational digital collaborative community serving diverse populations and under-represented voices, and promoting bridge building, intersectionality, and inclusion. This session examines dLOC’s robust governance model which created an un-colonized digital library that uplifts diversity, equity, and inclusion. Partners support each other and their international community of scholars, students, and peoples. dLOC surpasses many commercial collections, including oral histories, newspapers, official documents, ecological and economic data, maps, histories, literature, poetry, musical expressions, videos, and artifacts, with over 3.3 million pages. A significant resource for teaching, research, and cultural and community life, dLOC developed as a socio-technical—people, policies, communities, technologies—platform, developing and enhancing communities of practice through shared goals, joint action and procedural justice.
Funding Digital Projects: The View from the NEH Office of Digital Humanities
Friday, February 19, 2 p.m.
Hannah Alpert-Abrams, Program Specialist in the NEH Office of Digital Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities has been funding digital research since its foundation in 1965, and today offers more than fifteen programs that can support digital research, teaching, and publication. In this presentation I will speak about the history and state of the field for DH funding, and offer insight into the application process at the NEH.
The Who, What, Where, When, but Mostly Why of Faculty Publishing on Their Own Domain
Friday, February 26, 2 p.m.
Andy Rush, Course Media Developer for the Center for Instruction and Research Technology (CIRT), University of North Florida
This is a story about the University of North Florida’s implementation of a “Domain of One’s Own”. The Who is you, and the What is easy – a faculty domain is an opportunity to create academic publishing spaces using modern web applications such as WordPress and Omeka. There is no question of should, of course you should. But it’s more a question of Where, and dare we ask Why? A faculty domain can function as a hub for a professional scholarly presence. The service provides for common needs such as book websites, portfolios, and podcasts. It is a gift to you. It’s a sandbox and permission to play in it. And while the Center for Instruction and Research Technology (CIRT) at UNF completely supports faculty in making the “perfect” website, we also advocate for exploring the possibilities of free and open source tools. We want envelopes pushed. Heck, we will even encourage the breaking of things. And we’ll say “Good, you broke it.”
We see a faculty domain as a logical home for Digital Humanities projects, because it’s a space where you have total control and ownership. It’s a place where you manage your digital identity, and share your research, share your book, and share YOUR story. We see a Domain as part of a community of practice focused on collaboration and sharing. Come learn about Why you need your own domain. The When is Now!
Making Digital Humanities Tools Part of a World Language Class
Friday, March 5, 2 p.m.
Eugenia Charoni, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages, Flagler College, Maguire Maria Jose, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Flagler College, & Juliet Frey, Flagler College student
In this panel the presenters are professors and a student who worked together to integrate two digital tools, the Social Book and ArcGis Story Maps, in two foreign language classes. Because of the increasing interest in Digital Humanities and the way this approach disseminates knowledge in an effortless way while it connects language learners inside and outside the classroom, the professors incorporated into course assignments these two digital tools. Their objective was to engage students in reading discussions inside and outside the classroom, motivate them to conduct research and present their findings in an interactive way and after all use the target language in a meaningful yet productive way.
There will be two presentations, one from the professors and one from a student. The professors will explain the importance of language learning with the use of digital tools and share their practical approach in the classroom. The student will share their experience working with digital tools for the first time and will walk us through their projects.
Novel Strategies and Challenges for the Johnson’s Dictionary
Friday, March 12, 2 p.m.
Beth Rapp Young, Associate Professor of English, University of Central Florida; Abigail Moreshead, Texts & Technology PhD. student, University of Central Florida; Carmen Faye Mathes, Assistant Professor, University of Regina; William Dorner, PhD., Instructional Specialist, University of Central Florida; Amy Larner Giroux, PhD., Associate Director of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research, University of Central Florida; & Connie Harper, Software Developer, University of Central Florida;
When Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language appeared in 1755, it swiftly became the language’s most influential dictionary, and this dictionary is still widely used. For all its importance, though, the lack of an authoritative text and usable interface have made this resource more difficult to use than it should be.
Our three‐year Johnson’s Dictionary Online project, funded by the NEH, seeks to remedy this problem by creating an online, searchable edition of this Dictionary (including both 1st [1755] and 4th [1773] folio print editions) with functionality comparable to other modern, scholarly dictionaries. Nine months in, we have accomplished a great deal, but we have encountered some important challenges. Our panel will describe these challenges and explain how we are working through them. We hope attendees might learn from our experiences—and we hope to learn from theirs.
With the cancellation of our 2020 conference, we lost the opportunity to meet and connect in person, but FLDH is finding new ways to share our stories across the state. Join us for our Digital Humanities in the Sunshine State (and beyond!) 2020-2021 Webinar Series. Registration for our first five webinars is now open on the FLDH website, with more coming in Spring 2020. Can’t attend? The webinars will be recorded and available on our website.
Digital Humanities in the Sunshine State (and beyond) 2020-2021 Webinar Series.
Using an Interactive Timeline to Contextualize Art History Jesslyn Parrish, University of Central Florida, Ph.D. student
Don of a New Age: A Digital Exploration of Don Quixote Melissa Garr, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Spanish & Marina Morgan, MISt., Metadata Librarian, Florida Southern College
Documenting Africa: Digitally Storytelling African Cultures Through Space and Time. Mary Anne Lewis Cusato, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of French & Francophone Studies, Co-Director, Global Studies Institute, Ohio Wesleyan University; & Nancy Demerdash-Fatemi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Art History, Albion College.
Primary Source Literacy: Teaching a Diverse Florida through Online Public History Collections Molly Castro, Digital Humanities Librarian, Florida International University, Rachel Walton, Digital Archivist, Rollins College, & Christopher Davis, Professor, Florida International University.
Beyond “Compare”: Exploring Drafts, Translations, and Variants in a University Repository Service. Sarah Stanley, Florida State University, Digital Humanities Librarian
As you know, we had decided to postpone the FLDH 2020 Conference that was supposed to be on March 27, 2020. After careful consideration, we decided that having the conference in person in October 2020 would not be possible either.
In lieu of a physical conference, FLDH will be offering several options for showcasing the amazing panels and poster presentations that were going to take place. Stay tuned for more information.
After much thought and discussion, the planning team for the FLDH 2020 Conference originally scheduled for March 27 at Flagler College, has decided to postpone the conference until October 2020. The team will be working to identify an exact date and the FLDH website will be updated as more information becomes available. https://www.fldh.org/fldhconference/
In regards to the Coronavirus, we are monitoring the situation. As of now, we are not cancelling the conference. You can also consult http://FloridaHealth.gov/COVID-19/ for the latest information.
The Florida
Digital Humanities Consortium (FLDH) will host its 2nd annual conference at
Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL on Friday, March 27, 2020. FLDH is
a collective of institutions in the State of Florida that seeks to promote an
understanding of the humanities in light of digital technologies and research.
Founded in 2014, FLDH provides a platform for studying and discussing digital
tools, methods, and pedagogies as well as educates teachers, faculty, and the
public about the multiple, interdisciplinary ways humanities research and
computing impact our world. Each year at the annual conference, FLDH members
and guests meet to hear current research, discuss issues of interest, and set
goals for future collaboration and digital humanities research.
The conference will last all
day and include academic research and teaching presentations in the morning and
early afternoon, followed by a THATCamp session and a plenary talk and dinner.
FLDH seeks proposals for papers, posters, lightning rounds, roundtables, and
panel presentations on any topic related to digital humanities. We welcome
proposals not only from those in higher education, including students, faculty
and staff, but also from cultural institutions and other organizations doing
work in the digital humanities.
Individual abstracts of
200-250 words should be submitted for talks of 15 minutes.
A panel proposal of 150-250
words by the panel organizer(s) and individual abstracts for 3-5 papers can be
submitted for panel presentations.
Posters, lightning rounds, and
roundtables can be proposed with brief descriptions of 150 words.
All proposals should include
name, affiliation, contact email, and needed IT equipment.
The deadline for submissions has been extended to January 30, 2020.
The Florida
Digital Humanities Consortium (FLDH) will host its 2nd annual conference at
Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL on Friday, March 27, 2020. FLDH is
a collective of institutions in the State of Florida that seeks to promote an
understanding of the humanities in light of digital technologies and research.
Founded in 2014, FLDH provides a platform for studying and discussing digital
tools, methods, and pedagogies as well as educates teachers, faculty, and the
public about the multiple, interdisciplinary ways humanities research and
computing impact our world. Each year at the annual conference, FLDH members
and guests meet to hear current research, discuss issues of interest, and set
goals for future collaboration and digital humanities research.
The conference will last all day
and include academic research and teaching presentations in the morning and
early afternoon, followed by a THATCamp session and a plenary talk and dinner.
FLDH seeks proposals for papers, posters, lightning rounds, roundtables, and
panel presentations on any topic related to digital humanities. We welcome
proposals not only from those in higher education, including students, faculty
and staff, but also from cultural institutions and other organizations doing
work in the digital humanities.
Individual abstracts of 200-250
words should be submitted for talks of 15 minutes.
A panel proposal of 150-250
words by the panel organizer(s) and individual abstracts for 3-5 papers can be
submitted for panel presentations.
Posters, lightning rounds, and
roundtables can be proposed with brief descriptions of 150 words.
All proposals should include
name, affiliation, contact email, and needed IT equipment.
